Letters to the editor: Stand up for polar bears

By Rebecca GrayPrice

Editor:

Yesterday I read a story that broke my heart. The L.A. Times reported that researchers have tracked a female polar bear that swam for nine days - nonstop - across the Beaufort Sea, before reaching an ice floe.

"In one of the most dramatic signs ever documented of how shrinking Arctic sea Ice impacts polar bears, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska have tracked a female bear that swam nine days across the deep, frigid Beaufort Sea Before reaching an ice floe 426 miles offshore," stated the article.

The marathon swim came at a cost: with little food likely available once she arrived, the bear lost 22 percent of her body weight and her year old female cub, who set off on the journey did not survive the researchers said.

Shrinking sea ice continues to affect polar bears in the Arctic.

Each year, more and more polar bears die as the sea ice that they depend on is destroyed by global warming, pollution, forcing them to swim longer distances in search of ice floes to hunt and den.

At the southern edge of polar bears' range in the Hudson Bay, the approximately 900 polar bears are already in danger of dying out completely. Their plight is a preview of what can, and will happen to polar bears in the Arctic if nothing is done.

In fact, scientists predict an incredibly high likelihood of extinction of two-thirds of the world's polar bears in the next 40 years.

There is hope for polar bears living in the Arctic - but only if we limit global warming pollution and protect their habitat from oil and gas development, starting now. Big Polluters are doing everything they can to continue dumping unlimited global warming pollution into the air. Right now they are attacking the Clean Air Act and Environmental Action agency - at the expense of the future of polar bears.

Polar bears need our help and protection to ensure a long, healthy future for the species. We cannot stand idly by while they continue to disappear from the planet.

We must take action. Contact your Congressmen to stand up to big polluters and defend critical legislation like the Clean Air Act that will protect the future of polar bears - before it's too late.